Abstract

Background

In Australia a persistent and sizable gender wage gap exists. In recent years this
gap has been steadily widening. The negative impact of gender wage differentials is
the disincentive to work more hours. This implies a substantial cost on the Australian
health sector. This study aimed to identify the magnitude of gender wage differentials
within the health sector. The investigation accounts for unpaid overtime. Given the
limited availability of information, little empirical evidence exists that accounts
for unpaid overtime.

Methods

Information was collected from a sample of 10,066 Australian full-time employees within
the health sector. Initially, ordinary least-squares regression was used to identify
the gender wage gap when unpaid overtime was included and then excluded from the model.
The sample was also stratified by gender and then by occupation to allow for comparisons.
Later the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition method was employed to identify and quantify
the contribution of individual endowments to wage differentials between males and
females.

Results

The analyses of data revealed a gender wage gap that varied across occupations. The
inclusion of unpaid overtime in the analysis led to a slight reduction in the wage
differential. The results showed an adjusted wage gap of 16.7%.

Conclusions

Unpaid overtime made a significant but small contribution to wage differentials. Being
female remained the major contributing factor to the wage gap. Given that wage differentials
provide a disincentive to work more hours, serious attempts to deal with the skilled
labour shortage in the health sector need to address the gender wage gap.